Data for Change

Round up a roomful of statisticians
and technologists to dive
into data for a weekend and intriguing
things can happen. An
opaque spreadsheet about traffic
stops in New York City, for
instance, morphs into an easy-to-
read map of potential racial
profiling hot spots.

“Working quickly can be an
impressive trick, but the real
value is when organizations
start to see what you can do
with data. Every organization
needs data in its DNA,” says
Jake Porway, co-founder of Data
Without Borders (DWB).

Since its launch in mid-2011,
DWB has demonstrated not
only the value of bringing data
science to social change organizations,
but also the willingness
of technical experts to donate
their time to good causes. Porway,
with a PhD in statistics and
a day job in The New York Times
R&D Lab, started DWB to create
more meaningful volunteer
outlets for people who share his
credentials. Weekend hackathons
didn’t “scratch the itch,”
he says. “Those events generate
a lot of excitement, but the
products coming out of them
tend to be things like new apps
for restaurant reviews.”

Meanwhile, NGOs lag behind the for-profit world in harnessing
data and using analytical
tools to make better decisions.
“Most nonprofits don’t have the
resources to bring this expertise
in-house,” says Lucy Bernholz,
visiting scholar at the Stanford
Center on Philanthropy and
Civil Society. “But nonprofits
have tons of data. They are a
critical part of our collective
data ecosystem.”

Porway launched DWB with a
blog post that went viral, helped
along by tech guru Tim O’Reilly,
among others. “All of a sudden,
organizations were flooding my
inbox and data scientists were lining
up to get involved,” he says.

DWB co-founder Drew Conway
says he’s typical of those attracted
to the new organization.
A graduate student at New York
University, he also runs an open source
statistical computing
group. “There are a lot of us who
pay the bills with our day jobs,
then work on what’s meaningful
at 4 a.m.,” he says.

At one of DWB’s first events,
Conway served in the role of
“data ambassador” for a UN initiative
called Global Pulse. In an
effort to detect world problems
more rapidly, Global Pulse conducted
a large-scale mobile survey
and wanted help analyzing
results. “We helped them visualize
the data to get to a more
granular level of understanding,”
Conway explains. Results
were later shared with the UN
General Assembly, leaving DWB
“feeling like a proud parent,”
Porway says.

That wasn’t the only outcome.
DWB volunteers also
brought “a more dispassionate
view” to their analysis of UN
data, Conway says. He pointed
out the limitations of a survey
that asks people to opt in, in exchange
for mobile minutes.
“That doesn’t accurately take
the mood of a billion people. You need to understand the limits
when you talk about data.”

Getting organizations to ask
better questions is a likely
outcome of DWB’s efforts.
“Questions never
stop coming when you
start looking at data,”
Porway says. Turning raw
numbers into visual representations,
for instance, “helps you
understand connections much
more quickly. But visualization is
really the beginning point,” he
says. “It’s where you can begin to
compare things in an otherwise
opaque mist of numbers.”

During 2012, DWB plans to
continue hosting weekend data
dives in a handful of cities while
also embarking on longer-term
projects with nonprofit partners.

Bernholz, who serves as an
DWB advisor, says the organization
“has tremendous potential.
The successes they have with early
adopters will send a strong signal
throughout the sector that data
matter, that nonprofits have data,
and that they can improve their
own work and their communities
by learning how to share it, use it,
and put it to work.”

Mobile adoption at the base of the pyramid will bring massive development benefits, but we must seize the unique opportunity to drive pre-emptive positive digital behavior to help safeguard vulnerable communities.